


Becoming: New York

by Churbooseanon



Series: For Every Action, A Reaction [1]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Blood and Injury, M/M, Original Character Death(s), War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-22 02:55:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3712165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Churbooseanon/pseuds/Churbooseanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before he was an Agent of Project Freelancer, he was a a Specialist in the UNSC Army. The job change was his own way to get out alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Becoming: New York

The world is a mass of tiny distractions, each one more frustrating than the last. He can smell the sweat on his clothing. Taste the tang of blood in his mouth from where he’d bitten into his cheek during the last fire fight. Worst of all, he can hear the heavy breathing of the men behind him whose job descriptions included covering him until he got this damn door open. 

Specialist Miles Cunningham had more trouble phasing those distractions out than he really should have. Still, he took a deep breath and tried to push aside the extraneous senses and throw his whole attention, whole being, into the two that mattered: sight and touch. Yeah, sound helped too sometimes, but there was no way he was going to get the silence he needed to treat this old girl the way she deserved. With a sigh he carefully watched the video feed on his datapad as he slid the scope back and forth in the hole. 

“There it is,” he chuckled quietly to himself as he finally caught a glimpse of his target. “Mark it,” he ordered, and PFC Daniels stepped forward and made a small chalk mark on the large metal door. With that Miles slowly fished the scope back through the hole he had drilled higher up in the mechanism of the door and passed the unneeded gear off to Daniels. That done he fetched his drill back out, levered it up to the mark and carefully braced the drill to prevent wiggle and accidental triggering of the relocker mechanism. 

After a deep breath, and a second, he finally gave the drill some power. This was always the fun part, living or dying in the struggle against minutiae. Of course half of the fun (honestly more than half of it) was removed from the fact that too many lives rested on him getting through this door. 

“How much longer?” Sergeant Barstow snapped from behind him, and Miles just shook his head at the interruption.

“Can’t rush this kind of thing, sir. If I mess this we’re going to have a set of five relocker bolts about as long and thick as a Spartan’s arm will snap into place, on top of the previous ones. If that happens the amount of explosives we’ll need to blast this thing open would draw all the Covvie forces in the area down on us like no one’s business. Just… just give me a few minutes,” York demanded over the sound of his drill. 

“You’ve got one.”

Why was it that people always thought that telling him he had less time than he truly needed was going to make things move faster? It took as long as it took or they blew the door. Either way he was intent on focusing on his task and not the implied threat.   
With a sigh Miles turned his whole attention back to the lock and refused to let the rest of the distractions around him catch at his senses and hold any sway. He’d make it through the door when he made it through, and he would make it through. There was no other option. The secure tunnel through this door was the only way they were sneaking behind Covvie lines to blow up that munitions depo they had, and damn if the only idiot that knew how to open this door hadn’t died in the first air raid. 

Which was why they had sent him in, of course. No one mastered locks, human or Covvie construction, quite like Miles did. 

* * * * * *

“Fucking Bullshit!” Miles cursed as he threw his helmet across the room and threw himself down onto the collapsible cot that had been set up for his use. The room, like many here at base, was almost frustratingly cramped, but he couldn’t exactly complain about it too much. After all everyone was staying in different parts of this old, burnt out concrete shell of a building that he was pretty certain used to be some kind of clinic or other. More than that, this tiny room was private and far better than a standard tent. 

“Rough day?” a voice asked at the door to the room, and Miles almost groaned to hear it. 

“Fuck off, Sparky,” Miles groaned, shifting so he was lying on his back with an arm thrown over his eyes to block the sight of the overly cheerful PFC who always seemed to find his way into Miles’s bunk. Whether it was on a ship, in a tent, or in a place like this, Sparky was always there when Miles didn’t necessarily want him. Of course there were times when he did want Sparky around but for now… “I’m really not in the mood.”

“Is that an offer or an order?” the youngest soldier laughed, and there was suddenly a weight down around the foot of the cot that told Miles that he wasn’t getting rid of the other man any time soon. There was an urge, a none too small one, that suggested Miles should put his booted foot on Sparky’s back and shove him off the cot and onto his ass, but really, he couldn’t be bothered. 

And maybe there was a part of him that was actually thankful of the company in spite of how chipper he knew it was going to be. 

“Who can fucking tell these days?” Miles answered, lifting his arm just enough to see the wide, and concerned, grin his friend was wearing. 

“Them’s the breaks,” Sparky cheered, and his weight on the cot shifted until Miles felt the other man settle next to him, Sparky’s back pressed firmly up against Miles’s side. “What happened? Only half your…”

“Please, not now,” Miles pleaded, his voice low as he rolled onto his side as well and draped an arm around his friend’s waist. He didn’t quite pull Sparky against him, wasn’t really in the mood for that kind of thing, but it wasn’t like Sparky was pulling away either. “I don’t want to think about what happened.”

“That bad?”

“Wow, PFC, what part of ‘I don’t want to think about it’ is so fucking hard to understand?”

For a while there was silence, and to be honest, Miles couldn’t have been more thankful for it. Even now he was certain that if he closed his eyes he would be able to see what had happened on the mission in his head, burned into his eyelids. The shouts of pain and the smell of blood were hard to block out as well, but he thought he maybe had that down. There were always so many screams and vile smells in battle anyway…

“The fact half your squad died, Thief.”

Well, if there was one way to get Miles moving quickly, it was that comment. The verbal reminder of what was already going on behind his eyes and in his ears. The room smells like blood and gunpowder and the bitter, acrid tang of explosives. He can hear the moans of the dying, the pleas of the living, the sobs of pain and terror. And closer, ever closer, the unintelligible grunts of the language of the fucking hinge-heads. Their footsteps are surprisingly quiet, something that had always terrified him, you never knew when they were coming.

He can still feel the weight of PFC Daniels’s body covering his own, still feel the splattering of blood over his cheek, once hot, growing cooler with every second. 

The very memory makes him sick. 

“Miles,” a voice whispered in his ear, and he could feel a weight on his back that he wasn’t really prepared for. Part of him wanted to scream, to flail, to get Daniels off of him so he doesn’t have to be burdened by that weight. 

“Miles, breathe man. Come on, fucking breathe.”

The hand, because Miles understood suddenly that was what the weight and warmth was, started rubbing soothing circles over the back of his new, clean uniform. One that had never been caked with Daniels’s blood. One that had never been in the place that Miles never wanted to remember again in his life. 

“What happened?” Sparky repeated, pulling Miles back down to sit on the edge of his cot. “Fuck man, you know you have to talk about it. Some. Not much, but you’ve got to try some.”

Yeah, no, fuck that idea. Fuck it with a rusty spork. Or better, his drill. Shove his drill into the temple of that fucking idea, turn it on, and let the drill deal with the idea. So Miles just shoved back to his feet and started pacing. 

“What fucking happened is Barstow refused to listen to me,” he snarled, hands shoved into his pockets to make sure they weren’t shaking. He was a fucking infiltration expert specializing in locks, secured doors, and getting into places where people didn’t want him to go. That meant that his hands were stable, predictable things. 

The last thing Miles wanted at that moment was to be confronted with how badly they were shaking. No, anything short of absolute control over himself was something that he refused to face. Especially considering the fact, which most people chose to ignore, that Miles was rated for some serious combat. 

“Does he ever listen to you?” Sparky prompted, and while Miles knew he was fishing, truth be told he needed to rage. Needed to shout and fume because otherwise… 

“No,” he sighed, shaking his head. “No, he fucking doesn’t. If he’d just given me time, just let me finish the job I was suppose to do... “

Get the door open. That had been the mission parameter. He’d only needed a few minutes. It was more important to get that door open quietly than to get it open quickly and in the end… 

In the end the explosion had brought the Covvies down on them in thick waves. Hinge-heads with their energy swords slashing bodies apart. It had happened so suddenly, those assholes using their cloaking bullshit tech, and there was a body falling on him. Shouting behind him. Guns everywhere and screaming. 

“They say you killed four gatorfaces on your own,” Sparky observed quietly. 

Miles looked down at his friend, his sometime partner on the field, and his not infrequent lover. Mixed in his eyes with the pity and the concern was something Miles hadn’t picked up before. 

Awe. 

Sparky was in awe of him.

Normal soldiers didn’t take out Sangheili in close combat in an ambush in a small chamber. Normal soldiers don’t help half their team get out alive after Sergeant had died. Normal soldiers weren’t…

“There’s talk of a medal,” Sparky admitted. “Thing is… the things people get medals for in this war…”

When he trailed off Miles knew what he meant to say. It was something they had joked about before. The people up for commendations had been through bad shit. People suggested for medals were usually never the same after their experience. Took too many people dying, or the person getting the medal dying, to have someone really ‘awarded’ anything that had the remotest commendation involved with it. Which was why Sparky was here, clearly. Concern. 

“I’m fine,” Miles lied, and the words were easier than he thought they could be. “People are fucking inflating things. Mostly just some grunts and a pair of hinges. First one got Daniels. Second Barstow. They didn’t know I was… They didn’t know I was alive under Daniels so I managed to get to my feet and shoot it in the back. That’s all it takes.” 

For them to think you’re dead. Not complicated. 

The grenade was where things had gotten iffy. Some asshole PFC too terrified to think straight throwing a frag in the middle of an area filled with grunts and their little tanks of highly explosive personal atmosphere. Nothing like a fucking fireball to take out half a squad. 

It’s a war. That was something Miles had gotten through his head a long time ago. The way he acted, confident and in control, was his personal way of dealing with the complexities of it. People around you died. Faces changed. Giant pseudo-apes punched the head off of your best friend in some strange berserker rage. Even larger amalgamations of fucking colony works or some shit barrelled through walls and trampled everything in their paths. Chicken-headed freak jobs stood on the top of unscalable cliffs and picked off every last man in your unit with frustratingly good headshots and you prayed you would be one of the groups lucky enough to have the miracle of a SPARTAN descending on your position, a power-armor clad avenging angel that left everything around them in ruins, but under definite human control. 

But there are some things, like the smell of burning human flesh that stuck. That made Miles’s gut roll even now. Bile surging up from his gut and burning his body from the inside out in some cruel twist of fate. 

There wasn’t a single burn on his skin, but he could still smell the char of Barstow’s corpse. He’d had to get too close. When it was all over and they were drenched in the mix of thick red human blood and the iridescent ichor of Covvie bastards, he’d been the senior ranker. He had been the one to send the men that had become his along to secure their escape. He had been the one who had to decide that these bodies had to be left behind while he yanked scalding hot dogtags from bodies and stuffed them into his pocket. 

And Miles Cunningham had been the one to decide that the mission was too important to give up, even with so many fallen. 

Miles who had refused to risk anyone else. 

Miles who had taken the explosives kit from the body of their explosives woman, dead with a needler dart through her throat and sticking out the back. 

The team he had sent back with a missive to their Captain, and instructions that if he wasn’t back in a day they were to find another way to take out the depo. The dog tags he had pressed into the hands of the man he had put in charge, and he’d gone off. 

When he’d slunk back into camp, his uniform stiff with blood, his explosives pack empty, and running low on bullets in both his shotgun and the battle rifle he had taken from a fallen body, there had been whispers. York had ignored them as he moved through the camp to the command set-up. But that didn’t mean that he couldn’t hear that the explosion had been visible from even here. 

“How you doing, Miles?” Sparky asked, and it was only with that question that Miles realized he’d gotten lost in his own head. 

“Not good, Spark. Not good at all.”

With that he collapsed back onto the bed and let Sparky turn him over onto his stomach. He didn’t even move, didn’t make a sound as his friend peeled his shoulder pieces off and started to massage the tension from his shoulders. 

For the first time since everything happened, when Miles closed his eyes he didn’t see the new horrors before his eyes. 

* * * * * *

The decision was handed down by Captain Saunders. 

To be honest, Miles couldn’t disagree with him less. He’d thought that Barstow was bad enough. It was because of that stupid Sergeant that far too many men because he couldn’t be patient. Saunders was a problem in the other extreme. Saunders wanted things to look good, cared more about troop morale than what really mattered. Which was the team having proper support. 

Before the mission, before it all went wrong, York went on missions where he was needed for things other than opening locks. Yes, he was good, but the fact was he had fighting skills too. He wasn’t just a set of hands. He was… 

He was lying on his cot. Had been for a few days now. Waiting for the announcement to come in from wherever announcements came from. The ruling about the rest of his life. Would he be a figurehead for a few minutes and then sent back out to work? What he wanted more than anything was for all of this to be over sooner rather than later. He could do no good laying in on this cot day in and day out. But this was where the Captain had ordered him to be until the commendation and whatever else was thumbed up or brushed aside.

It’s where the Captain’s Corporal, a kind older gentleman named Franks, stopped in to offer him a stack of papers with the news.

Miles didn’t sleep for days. 

* * * * * *

“Specialist Cunningham to see you, sir,” Miles heard Franks announce at the Captain’s makeshift office door. 

“Cunningham? I didn’t call for him,” he heard the Captain reply gruffly, and Miles had to smile at the impatience in the man’s tone. Fuck him. 

“Nonetheless sir, he is here regarding an important matter.”

“Very well. Send him in.”

Miles didn’t bother to wait for Franks to look back at him before he pushed up from his seat and moved past the man and into the office. In fact, he didn’t even bother to salute or come to attention when Saunders looked up at him from behind the desk. That moment of indignation and fury that flashed through his CO’s eyes was just perfect. 

“Specialist,” the man greeted him dismissively, “what is it that you wanted…”

The thick sheaf of papers hit the desk in the most satisfying of thuds, and Miles did his best not to grin at the confused look it brought to Saunders’s face. To see those mousy little eyes narrow in confusion, that unscarred face and brow contort into a look a look of annoyance, it was perfect. 

There was nothing he could do but revel in it. This was all he had left. 

“And what are these supposed to be?” Saunders asked, reaching for the papers, and then his hand was jerking back at the ONI logo emblazoned on one corner. 

“My transfer orders, sir,” Miles said, none of the respect and crispness that should have been in his voice present. Instead he chose to drawl the words out. This man deserved nothing from him but disdain. 

“I didn’t approve a trans…”

“I don’t think that much matters to Naval Intelligence and their research programs, sir,” Miles countered, his voice sharp for half a moment. “They, at least, recognize my value and are willing to put me into the hands of a CO that will put me into the field.”

 

“How dare you use that tone, Specialist!” Saunders shouted, getting to his feet as his fists slammed on his desk. “Are you questioning my…”

“Decisions? Courage? Suitability to be a commanding officer in a fight for our very survival as a species? Hell. Yes,” Miles growled, despite his best efforts to stay calm. “It was you that send the impatient Barstow on the demo mission. It got half our squad killed, not to mention almost killed me. If I had been left to lead that squad, or someone who understood how vital it was to be quiet, we could have done it with significantly less casualties.”

“Cunningham, you…”

“And then you decide to bench me when I come back? Do you know that you’ve sent men out on three separate missions that could have benefited either from my skills in infiltration, or just another hand in a fight that would have been there if you hadn’t confined me to quarters for some fucking political bullshit? Which bit of morale is better, sir, a fucking award or not losing an entire squad to poor management?”

The way the other man’s eyes were narrowing made Cunningham only briefly worried that his CO was going to lunge across the desk and try to throttle him. Still, he kept going. 

“Those men had lives, sir. Had families. Just last week you sent one of our fire teams into the field without recon scouting in the slightest. Six men died because you were lazy.”

“Those men knew the risk when…”

“Shut up,” Miles snarled. “I knew every man and woman on that team. Corporal Blake had a wife and a two year old daughter. Specialist Chalmer? One of the best demo woman I’ve ever known and you got her blown up in a place she had no business being. Privates Dimato and Herbert were fucking green as they came and you threw them into the thick of it. And PFC Novik?”

Miles could feel his hands shaking at his sides, fingers clenched into fists so tight that he could feel his nails digging into his skin. 

“We called him Sparky, sir. There wasn’t a piece of electronics on this damn planet that Sparky couldn’t fix. Barstow had an understanding that Sparky wasn’t sent into the field if it couldn’t be helped. No one else knew how to keep this fucking place running. Reports say his head was blown off by a Covvie sticky grenade stuck to his head. He had maybe a second to scream and know he was dead, sir.”

“This is war, soldier. People die,” Saunders answered, his voice surprisingly level. Miles couldn’t understand that. A moment ago he was furious. And now Miles felt like the world was falling down around him. So how in the world could this man be calm?

“They die faster when there is an incompetent CO,” Miles countered, trying to calm himself. “And here you are, trying to keep it all quiet. For ‘morale’ or some bullshit. Well, I found out. And when I did I pulled some strings. You do know that those calls for you to recommend a member of your command to possibly be added to a new ONI research program weren’t suggestions. They were orders, Saunders. I’ll be sure to tell them during my debrief that you ignored those.”

Now Saunders went pale. No one really crossed ONI consciously, not even Army grunts like them. No, Miles had power over him now, and they both knew it. 

“But look at this. Now you’ve not only got someone who you sent up the ladder, but with such glowing praise. I know. I wrote the recommendation myself. Oh, and the transport is here in three hours. I made sure not to tell you so you can’t pull any bullshit to keep me planetside.”

With that Miles finally saluted, but with a single upraised finger. 

“Burn in hell. Sir.”

He smiled at the sputtering mess of his CO, turned on heel, and walked out. The shuttle that would take him to the preliminary physicals for this so called ‘Project Freelancer’ would arrive soon, and he had one last thing to do before he left. Which was to pour out a beer for Sparky… all over the CO’s cot.


End file.
